Monthly Archives: July 2013

Kenya National Male Circumcision task force and players in the Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision have launched a pilot study to lure men within 24-49 years to circumcision. The initiative is aimed at circumcising male adults.

The awareness will start at greater Nyando before being rolled out to other parts of the region. The initiative will also provide food incentives, cash and shopping vouchers to families of those willing to be circumcised to entice more men to be circumcised.

Project director Kawango Agot said researchers will map out the village and provide volunteers with consent form that is upgraded to voucher or cash after they avail themselves for circumcision.

The intervention dubbed “Compensation for Transport, Cost and Lost Wages” associated with VMMC is being undertaken by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with Impact Research and Development Organisation.

The study will evaluate whether compensating men for transport cost and the wages they will lose for three days following circumcision, will result in more men volunteering for circumcision.

Kisumu county director of health, Ojwang Lusi said the intervention was arrived at following reports that many young men refuse to be circumcised because of fear of losing income in the three days they are healing.

The new program will target a group of boda boda operators to see if providing a stipend for three days will encourage more men to get circumcised.

“Two reasons men aged 25 years give for not getting circumcised are the cost of transport to clinic, and possibility of not being able to work afterwards. The purpose of this randomised controlled trial is to determine whether offering those men modest food vouchers to compensate them will make them get circumcised,” said Lusi during the launch at the weekend.

The initiative was given a go-ahead by the county ethics review committees in February 2013. The first phase of the study listed 7,800 households in nine sub-locations under the study, of which 1,800 men were randomly selected to participate.

(NaturalNews) A new study done in Belgium involving 1,369 men 18 and over, compared the sensitivity of the penis between those that were circumcised, and those that still had their foreskin intact.

Worldwide, it is estimated that only 30 percent of the male population is circumcised, but as many as 50 percent in the United States.

Besides comparing sensitivity, intensiveness of orgasm, and whether or not any numbness or pain was experienced while aroused were among the questions the Belgian men were asked to divulge the answers to.

A larger segment of the group, 1,059 in fact, were not circumcised, leaving only 310 of the men who were. The penis sensitivity scale ranged from zero to five, with five being on the higher end of sensitivity.

On average, in comparison to the circumcised segment of the group, the men who were not circumcised reported 0.2 to 0.4 higher in their sexual pleasure and sensitivity ranking. The sensitivity and arousal was in terms of stroking the glans (head of the penis) during arousal.

More intense orgasms were reported by the men with foreskin still intact, than those without.

“It’s not a very big difference in sensitivity, but it’s a significant difference,” said Dr. Piet Hoebeke, the study’s head researcher from Ghent University Hospital.

The choice to circumcise for some is because “it was recommended,” for others it is for sanitary reasons, and yet others tie religious reasons to this ritual.

According to one of the largest circumcision resources in the world, the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers, the belief that masturbation caused disease was why circumcision began in the 1800s, and the thought was that circumcision would “prevent masturbation.” Also mentioned is that the “foreskin is a normal, protective, functioning organ.”

Another sensitivity study, the Penile Touch-Test Sensitivity Study reported that “intact men [those having foreskin, i.e. not circumcised] enjoy four times more penile sensitivity than circumcised men.” This finding was published in the “Fine-touch Pressure Thresholds in the Adult Penis” article published on March 19, 2007 in the British Journal of Urology International.

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A new study in the British Journal of Urology International shows that men with normal, intact penises enjoy more sexual sensitivity — as much as four times more — than those who have been circumcised. Circumcising slices off more of a male’s sensitivity than is normally present in all ten fingertips.

In every site tested, intact men have as much or more fine-touch skin sensitivity on their penis and foreskin than a man who has been circumcised. Circumcision removes the most sensitive portions of the penis.

This new study demonstrates what we have suspected for decades, that circumcision’s result — if not its intent — is reduced sexual pleasure for men. As such, it is a violation of a male’s right to bodily integrity. In large part, female circumcision does the same; even the mildest forms remove the most sensitive portions of the female genitalia. Females in the USA and many other countries are protected by law from all forms of genital cutting.

The mistaken belief behind circumcision is that it is cleaner, healthier, protects against disease, and will make males more tractable in a society.

Because circumcision has such a drastic effect on sexuality later in life, no infant or child should ever experience a non-therapeutic circumcision.

Parents should not be allowed to control their son’s level of sexual sensitivity because of personal bias or prejudice, just as no parent should be allowed to request for their son or daughter any other sensitivity-reducing surgery; for example, eye surgery that would limit vision from color to black-and-white.

In addition, circumcised men, with one-fourth the sensitivity of intact men, might decline to wear further-desensitizing condoms. Some may consider themselves “safe” because of circumcision, adding to their determination to have sex without a condom.

Adult men who want circumcision for themselves should be advised per proper informed consent that penile sensitivity will be reduced on average by a factor of four. Men should also be advised that circumcision will not prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS.